Law & Order

Factory farm bills: the alarmist hype and the scary truth.

My inbox has been pummeled recently by a slew of e-mails warning me
of the evils of a bill currently working its way through Congress.
Sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), HR 875 — aka the Food
Safety Modernization Act of 2009 — is one of a raft of bills
introduced in the wake of the peanut-butter-borne salmonella
outbreak.

All of these proposed bills, which ostensibly seek to improve food
safety with increased regulation, threaten to jeopardize local food
systems with overregulation. Unfortunately, it's been difficult to get
a grip on the bills' true dangers because of all the alarmist hype
that's accompanied them — especially, for some reason, HR
875.

"If [HR 875] passes, say goodbye to organic produce, your Local
Farmer's market and very possibly, the GARDEN IN YOUR OWN
BACKYARD!!!!!" one e-mail announced.

Another warned that HR 875 would result in "criminalization of seed
banking, prison terms, and confiscatory fines for farmers."

"There is a perfectly legitimate conversation to be had about how we
can have food-safety regulation without jeopardizing small farms and
local food systems," says Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and
Water Watch, a national nonprofit. "But it's hard to have a rational
conversation via these forwarded e-mails. It's not happening in a way
that's going to change the policy."

Lovera says HR 875 wouldn't regulate seed-saving, backyard gardens,
or farmers' markets. It would, however, split the Food and Drug
Administration into separate agencies, one for food and one for drugs.
Food and Water Watch supports that. Unfortunately, Lovera says,
splitting the FDA might be too daunting a task for lawmakers to take on
right now, and the proposed bill probably won't make it to law.

More likely to reach a vote, Lovera says, is HR 759, called the Food
and Drug Administration Globalization Act. While this proposed bill has
drawn less attention than the others, she thinks it's more likely to
cause big problems for small farmers.

HR 759 would make record-keeping requirements that currently apply
to food processors extend to farms and require that such record keeping
be done electronically. It would also mandate that all farms become
certified in so-called good agricultural practices. Following these
practices, which are mostly aimed at controlling microbial
contamination, turns out to be easier for farms that grow just a few
things than it is for diverse, integrated farms — especially if
the farm contains livestock. These and other aspects of HR 759 boil
down, once again, to rules that would place a disproportionate burden
on small, family farms in their attempt to regulate the large factory
farms where most food-safety problems originate.

HR 875 and HR 759 are but two of several proposed bills that are
supposedly aimed at preventing E. coli in spinach, downer cattle in
school lunches, feathers in chicken patties, and other horror stories
we've grown all too used to hearing. But by extending these regulations
to the small farms that typically are not the sources of these
problems, the playing field will further tilt in favor of corporate
agriculture. This is truly cause for concern.

"What people don't realize is that if any of these bills pass, we
lose. All we will have left is industrial food." So says Deborah
Stockton, executive director of the National Independent Consumers and
Farmers Association, which promotes unregulated farmer-to-consumer
trade and the commercial availability of locally grown and
home-produced food products.

One of Stockton's top priorities is ending the controversial
National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Implemented by USDA in
2003 without congressional approval, NAIS is a federal registry program
for livestock and for the premises where animals live or visit. The
system's stated purpose is to aid state and federal government response
to outbreaks of animal disease.

"NAIS is a safety net for the corporate livestock industry,"
Stockton told me. "They're the ones with the practices that are
creating problems for human and animal health, and they're the ones who
need NAIS to cover their backs when something goes wrong. The main
threats to food safety are centralized production, processing, and
long-distance transportation."

While she too dislikes NAIS, Lovera says the bills currently under
consideration are aimed at the FDA, and NAIS is not an FDA program.
It's USDA. While she sees many problems with the current bills,
strengthening NAIS isn't one of them.

Stockton disagrees. If any of these bills pass, she says, it would
ratify NAIS and strengthen the USDA's ability to make it mandatory that
all livestock, including your flock of backyard chickens, be
registered.

A food-safety bill palatable to locavores will have to protect local
food systems with specific language that guarantees small family farms,
backyard gardens, personal livestock, and farmers' markets. All forms
of food self-sufficiency and farmer-direct purchasing are exempted.
These regulations need to target the factory farms where the problems
lie and not the small farms that could and should be the solution.

I'm hardly alone in believing the right to buy milk from your
neighbor or grow your own food is as inalienable as the right to bear
arms. And if lawmakers try to take this right away, they're going to
see a backlash to make the NRA seem like a bunch of flower-wagging Hare
Krishnas.

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